neither an act of sight, of touch, nor of imagination, and never was either of these, though it might formerly seem so, but is simply an intuition (inspectio) of the mind, . . .” It must be noted that the Latin word ‘inspectio’ is associated in its classical use with the notion of theory as opposed to practice.
The two great preoccupations of modern philosophy now lie clearly before us. The study of mind divides into psychology, or the study of mental functionings as considered in themselves and in their mutual relations, and into epistemology, or the theory of the knowledge of a common objective world. In other words, there is the study of the cogitations, quâ passions of the mind, and their study quâ leading to an inspection (intuition) of an objective world. This is a very uneasy division, giving rise to a host of perplexities whose consideration has occupied the intervening centuries.
As long as men thought in terms of physical notions for the objective world and of mentality for the subjective world, the setting out of the problem, as achieved by Descartes, sufficed as a starting point. But the balance has been upset by the rise of physiology. In the seventeenth century men passed from the study of physics to the study of philosophy. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, notably in Germany, men passed from the study of physiology to the study of psychology. The change in tone has been decisive. Of course, in the earlier period the intervention of the human body was fully considered, for example, by Descartes in Part V of the ‘Discourse on Method.’ But the physiological instinct had not been developed. In considering the human body, Descartes
